Half of Americans have listened to an audiobook, and the same percentage have listened to a podcast according to a 2019 survey conducted by Edison Research and Triton Digital. This was the first year that the audience for both podcasts and audiobooks reached 50% listenership. According to the Audio Publishers Association’s press release on the research, there is a clear crossover audience between the two: 55% of audiobook listeners had also listened to a podcast in the month surveyed.
This makes sense, as both podcasts and audiobooks are auditory ways of consuming information and stories. But beyond the numbers, I wanted to know: how else do the two industries intersect, feeding one into the other? In what ways do they amplify each other rather than simply competing for listeners? I’ve rounded up ten ways in which podcasts, audiobooks, and oral storytelling at large are interconnected, particularly now that more and more print books have an accompanying…
